5 Tricks To Help You Get The Most Out Of Microsoft Teams

There are a number of professional collaboration and communication apps out there all vying for your attention and allegiance. Unfortunately, in most professional scenarios this simply means leap-frogging between them depending on the preference of the person you are speaking with. Squaring up against the likes of WhatsApp, Skype, and Slack, in 2017 Microsoft released Teams, the integrated solution for in-and-out of office communication. Packed full of convenient features, Teams is already a hit with many businesses and individual users alike.

Use the features at your fingertips for better working

As the integrated chat arm of Office 365, Teams is the final piece in the watertight offering from Microsoft. With all of your favorite applications now easily synced and accessed from a single application, it’s easy to see why many people are choosing to use 365 as their sole workspace. For help migrating over to the system, it is possible to find a company which offers a curated service that ensures there is no document or data loss during the move and that systems are all ready for you to get stuck in. With everything set up and synced, as soon as you open your computer, you can expect to see Outlook and Teams automatically boot up, so you never have to waste a second manually launching them.

There are a number of important tips and tricks which can help ensure you get the most out of your Teams experience; here we explore the top five features offered as part of Teams.

Tag people

Teams lets you silence notifications for when you are focused working and don’t want any distractions. This is great, except for when someone else desperately needs your attention regarding a time-sensitive matter. Using the @ key, you can directly tag someone in a message, ensuring that they receive an immediate notification, whether they are muted or not. While remaining discreet, this feature ensures that people can still be reached: once they have received the message, it is up to them whether to break their workflow or not.

Upload files

Fully synced with all Office 365 features through SharePoint, Microsoft Teams enables instantaneous sharing of files. Whether they are on your desktop or in the cloud, you can simply upload them in a matter of moments and enjoy unparalleled access to them wherever and whenever, along with the rest of your team. As the files are kept in a SharePoint document library, they don’t clog up space or slow down runtime.

Create sub-channels

With Teams, you can chat to people directly or form group chats, but you can also create the namesakes’ teams. Forming a team as opposed to a group chat offers a broader range of features, one of which is the option to set up sub-channels for the team. While every team has a ‘General’ thread, you can create additional threads which target different tasks or groups of people. These might take the form of separating ‘work’ and ‘chat’, or sub-dividing tasks into ‘project management’ and ‘design.’ Team members can then follow the relevant channel for their line of work, while remaining informed about all of the overarching important news via the General channel.

Use tabs

Using tabs, you can instantly connect to the latest Windows 10 products, external URLs, documents, etc., and save them in your quick access toolbar. Simply click the plus symbol are the top of your team’s menu bar to explore the different options and see which is most applicable for your needs.

Go mobile

The Teams mobile app brings all the functionality of the desktop client to the palm of your hand. Enjoy messaging and file sharing while on-the-go, and tailor your notification settings to ensure discretion during meetings. Synced to your 365 calendar, Teams will notify others when you are booked into a meeting to further help guarantee you will not be disturbed.

2014, 2015 & 2016 Microsoft Most Valuable Professional Windows
Yuri specializes in troubleshooting (crash analysis and devices), system resource utilisation and system performance. He is also very interested in Customer Security. Yuri can be found as Windows Community Moderator and Wiki Author on Microsoft Answers and is active on different communities all across the web.

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